Monthly Archives: March 2018

The role of fabric in the work of costume and fashion designers is always crucial. One textile designer was often seen but rarely heard. This post will feature the textile designer Pola Stout, and how her exquisite woolen designs were used by designers Adrian and Irene, as well as Edith Head, Pauline Trigere, Mainbocher, Bonnie Cashin, Muriel King, Valentina, and others.

Adrian suit, 1947

An Adrian suit of Po;a Stout woolens from the late 1940s. Here it shows his love of stripes as well as asymmetry.

Pola was born in Poland but defied her parents by going to Vienna to study art at the Kunsgewerbe Schule. She studied textile design and hand-looming under Professor Joseph Hoffman. At one period, out of money, she slept on a park bench for six-weeks. But she shortly joined the famed Wiener Werkstatte where her works were exhibited and sold. Subsequently she received a special mention for hand-looming at the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratif (from where the term Art Deco was coined). The young Pola was well on her way to making a name for herself.

Always looking for the new frontier, Pola visited the U.S. and soon after moved here. She then began designing textiles for Dunhill in 1934. In the U.S. she also met and married the best-selling author Rex Stout, famed for his Nero Wolfe mystery stories. They had two daughters, Rebecca and Barbara.

Adrian Suit jacket of Pola Stout woolen

Both Adrian and Irene (Lentz Gibbons) began using Pola Stout fabrics in the late 1930s. Irene was still designing for Bullock’s Wilshire, and Adrian was at MGM when they began using Pola’s woolens. Soon after, the two costume and fashion designers traded places. Irene took over Adrian’s job at MGM and Adrian joined the fashion industry when he opened his own fashion line. Adrian then began using Pola Stout fabrics extensively for his suits, capes, and coats. Adrian so admired Pola’s textiles that he named one of his suit designs, Woven Joy. He named the suit above, Symphonic Traveler. Adrian said of her woolens, “Often the complexity of the material is a challenge and I try to simplify my approach as well as retain as interesting a use as I can possibly make of the fabric.” Looking at some of Adrian’s suits, one isn’t sure if this is one of his facetious comments or not as far as simplifying goes. He certainly made them interesting.

Photo of Pola and Rex Stout, courtesy of George Eastman House, photo by Nickolas Murray

Pola then began designing for Botony Mills in 1940, where she designed the “Botony Perennials” collection each season. She would also design limited edition textiles for several fashion designers, those that she worked closely with through Botany Mills. Thus, the designers could have their own custom look and color palette designed by Pola. These new textile designs were so beautiful that the upscale B. Altman’s 5th Avenue store in New York devoted all its windows to the Botany Perennials one season.

Pola would begin her design process by drawing lines on paper with color crayons. The vertical warp yarns would be in two or more colors and the horizontal weft yarns would often be woven in the same color sequence. But with all her color variations, Pola always had in mind the functionality, durability, and timeless appeal of her textile designs. She stated, “In developing Botany Perennials I visualize all kinds of American women interested in building a sound wardrobe, and I try to make that wardrobe something basic in style and wearability, something they can depend on.” And indeed the idea of the “Perennials” was that you could match skirts, jackets and coats in the same five-color harmonies, and from one season to the next.

Pola subsequently started her own company in 1946 with a mill in Philadelphia. She would design her own textiles for theselooms, where she would have multicolored wool yarns woven into “blankets” that would be sold to the various designers and exclusively to certain department stores. The textile workers were very devoted to her and her artistic vision.

Photo courtesy Palm Beach Vintage

The suit shown above was designed by Adrian and made from a Pola Stout striped woolen. Both Adrian and Irene loved to use stripes in various patterns in their suits. Adrian needed his stripes to be unique in order to avoid looking common. They both insisted on impeccable matching of lines in their creations. Adrian liked to cut the Pola Stout blankets into mitered patterns that would then be re-assembled into right-angles and other patterns in his suits. He also liked to use large color-blocking elements from those bolder sections of Pola’s blankets in his suits.

The innovative use of stripes in women’s suits by both Adrian and Irene using Pola Stout woolens has not been matched in the sixty plus years since their last design collections.

The Adrian suit below of Pola Stout woolen is a marvel of checks, with four different sizes. The jacket has an asymmetrical “slashing” of checks, increasing slightly in size as they go right to left and cross to the sleeve. They also go around to the back of the jacket. The skirt is also checkered.

Photo by Michael J. Shepherd

The image below shows an Adrian design for a hooded cape in the Grand Canyon colors of a Pola Stout woolen. In addition to the bold stripes are small polka dots in complimentary colors.

Pola generally believed in using five basic colors in her designs: blue; green; brown; black; and red. Combining these colored yarns, however, could create multiple effects. She would also add white yarns to these basic colors to produce her varying shades. Adrian stated about one of his capes made from Pola’s blankets in his 1950 collection, “In the case of a dramatic cape in my present collection…I did use the blanket – 54 inches wide by 3 yards in length, in its entirety.” Adrian’s cape matched the colors and stripes of the suit underneath it, all from Pola’s woolens.

Adrian cape from 1950. Photo courtesy the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

In addition to suits, Adrian also used Pola’s woolens to make dresses. Above is one example made entirely of Pola’s fabric, with various horizontal striping and blocking elements to create a unique design.

Pola Stout fabric swatches above are shown from Irene’s fall collection, 1948. Irene designed fabulous suits and also used the mitering technique to form interesting geometric patterns.

Below are several photos of sections from Pola Stout woolen designs. The variety in her designs was fascinating and endless. It should also be recognized that these are fine woolens, though they may appear as shear cottons or flannels and each photograph represents approximately 30-36 inches across.

Pola Stout continued her life-long commitment to the design of high quality textiles. She was also devoted to the promotion of the textile industry in America. She would no doubt be saddened by the fate of that industry in recent times, although hand-weaving on looms is currently a thriving art and craft. Pola was recognized by an exhibition of her work at the Bennington College of Vermont in 1957. She gave numerous lectures at industry groups and at colleges and museums. She also became a lecturer and consultant at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Growing up with their illustrious parents, Rebecca and Barbara knew they lived in somewhat unique circumstances. As school girls, Rebecca recalls that their mother made the clothes that she and her sister wore. They were no doubt the best-dressed girls in school, but Rebecca now recalls that at the time they wished they could just be dressed just like all the other girls. The sisters are now very proud of their mother’s artistic contribution to their lives and to that of her adopted country .

My thanks to Rebecca Stout Bradbury for sharing these amazing woolens with me and allowing me to photograph some of them shown here. The legacy of Pola Stout has uniquely enriched the heritage of fashion design and textiles in the United States.

My book on film costume & fashion designer Gilbert Adrian

MEMBER

Meta

Classic films abound in comforting stories and feel-good endings that are right for our times. After years of dystopian movies it’s great to have a plot that doesn’t have everybody dying. During years of the Great Depression, war years, and finally getting back to normal in the 1950s, many movies wanted to look at the […]

The Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival celebrated its 10th anniversary last year, 2019. And as with every film festival or other event this spring, the 2020 TCM Classic Film Festival had to be cancelled due to Covid-19. This year it will be presenting on-air through its cable station highlights from the past ten years […]

When Helen Rose began working at MGM with its roster of stars, mogul Louis B. Mayer told the costume designer to, “Just make them beautiful.” With her plentiful use of chiffon and her figure-flattering style, Helen Rose did just that, designing the costumes for leading ladies including Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Ava Gardner, Cyd Charisse, […]

Every year brings us five nominations for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design. For the movies of 2019 the field was not one of the best in my opinion, even with multiple previous Oscar winners in contention. As is customary, the nominations were made by the Costume Designers branch of the Academy, but […]

Gene Kelly had a storied career as dancer, singer and choreographer. He also partnered with many of the greatest actresses and dancers in show business. He taught dance at his family’s Pittsburgh dance school while attending college and then law school. He gave that up when he decided to act and choreograph on Broadway. He […]

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer began in 1924 with the merger of Metro Pictures, Louis B. Mayer Productions, and Goldwyn Pictures. It was a package costing $5 million. The new owner was Marcus Loew who owned a chain of theaters. He had already bought out Metro Pictures and its studio in Hollywood, but was unsatisfied with its productions. Louis […]

Hollywood’s late costume designer Milo Anderson created looks for the stars that are icons of style. But ask anyone about him and blank stares are the response. His name was simple, as were the styles he created: Joan Crawford’s waitress uniform in Mildred Pierce, Marlene Dietrich’s dark blue trench-coat, skirt and beret in Manpower, Lana […]

A convergence of world phenomena hit director Costa-Gavras when he harnessed their energies to create his political masterpiece Z in 1969. In Paris and France, students and workers went on general strike and caused civil disorder in 1968. In the U.S. President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert F. Kennedy were all assassinated. The Vietnam war caused […]

Universal Studios has the longest history of the Hollywood studios. It was founded in 1912 in New York by Carl Laemmle and other partners. Like many other film companies, it moved west. By the end of 1912 Universal was in Hollywood and by 1915 it opened its 230 acre Universal City Studio, the largest film […]

The Vive la France Blogathon hosted by Lady Eve’s Reel Life and silverscreenmodes.com is live for its first day and second days of August 25 and 26, 2019. Links to posts are embedded in the titles in bold below. Enjoy! Sunday, August 254 Star Films | Leon Morin, Priest (1961) Caftan Woman | Paris Blues (1961)Critica Retro | Faces of […]

This blog post looks back at the history of Paramount Pictures’ Wardrobe Department, its Golden Age costume designers, and its current Archives. An interview with Randall Thropp, the Manager of the Costumes and Prop Archives at Paramount is also included. Movie history permeates the air at the Paramount Pictures Studio Archives. It might be […]

Costuming the HBO series The Game of Thrones is as near a Herculean job as you’ll find in television costume design work. When HBO started production of the series in 2007, there existed a legion of fans that had been reading the book series: George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, since 1996. […]

The film noir classic The Killers, like the Ernest Hemingway short story it was based on, got right to the point. Two men get out of a car at a gas station and enter Henry’s lunchroom. They take a seat. “What’s yours,” George the waiter asks, in the clipped diner-speak of the day. So began […]

Collecting and preserving movie memorabilia is like bottling the river of time. Even the best efforts are fragmentary while the flows continue by. The movie studios themselves made little or no effort in the first decades of movie-making, considering its material objects worthless unless they could be re-used for another production or rented out. To […]

Every year brings us five nominations for the Best Costume Design Academy Award. In 2019 the field had great candidates from the 2018 movies vying for the Oscar, with several multi Oscar winners among the contenders. As is customary, the nominations were made by the Costume Designers branch of the Academy, but all members voted on […]